Presenting a model of self-esteem and internet addiction in secondary school students based on cyberbullying with the mediating role of alexithymia

Today, new social harms have emerged at the level of schools, which overshadowed the personal and academic lives of many students. Considering the importance of cyberbullying, Internet addiction and alexithymia, as well as the gap in research, it seems necessary to provide a coherent model in this field and conduct more studies.

The purpose of the present study was to present a model of self-esteem and Internet addiction in secondary school students based on cyberbullying with the mediating role of alexithymia.

The current research was a description of the type of correlation and structural equation studies. The statistical population of the research included all female students of second secondary schools in Yasuj city in the academic year of 2022-2023. 250 people were selected by cluster sampling method and the questionnaires of cyberbullying by Setin et al. (2011), Rosenberg's self-esteem (1963), Internet addiction Young (1999) and alexithymia Bagby et al. (1994) responded enthusiastically. Finally, the data were collected and analyzed by Pearson correlation and structural equations modeling using SPSSV19 and AMOSV20 software.

The results showed that cyberbullying had a positive, direct and significant effect on alexithymia and internet addiction and a negative, direct and significant effect on self-esteem
(P< 0.01). Also, alexithymia had a mediating role in the relationship between cyberbullying and self-esteem and Internet addiction (P< 0.01).

In the end, it can be said that the final model of the research has a good fit, and therefore, the awareness of teachers, managers, parents, students and other experts in the field of education about the variables of this model can help prevent new social harms in schools.